of us. >> reporter: dr. roy is an engineer by training, but the project brought together cell biologists, material scientists, engineers and practicing physicians. >> by finding these right people together i think we can sort of take out these traditional ways of doing academic research in silos, but saying lets put our arms together and brains together and solve the problem collectively and for a project like this you absolutely need that to succeed. >> reporter: it's the same collaborative approach that scott johnson's myelin repair foundation is promoting teams of scientists working collaboratively to achieve common goal changing the model for how research works and solving the problem of multiple sclerosis that's challenged him for 34 years. >> and to be able to prevent others from going through that is something i'd like to do. but probably on a larger scale it's really about this model because i think that this model can be applied to any disease research. >> reporter: and of course there's no shortage